Dorner, in the first edition of his work on the “Person of
Christ,” says that the Lutheran theology carried the attempt to preserve the unity
of Christ’s person, on the Church assumption that He possessed two distinct natures,
to the utmost extreme. If that attempt be a failure, nothing more remains. He holds
it to be a failure not only because it involves the impossible assumption of a transfer
of attributes without a change of substance, but also because it is one-sided. It
refuses to admit of the communication of human attributes to the divine nature,
whilst it insists on the transfer of divine perfections to the human nature. And
moreover, he urges, that admitting all the Lutheran theory claims, the union of
the two natures remains just as unreal as it is on the Church doctrine. Any distinction
of natures, in the ordinary sense of the words, must, he says, be given up. It is
on this assumption that the modern views of the person of Christ are founded. These
views may be divided into two classes, the Pantheistical and the Theistical. These
two classes, however, have a good deal in common. Both are founded on the principle
of the oneness of God and man. This is admitted on all sides. “The characteristic
feature of all recent Christologies,” says Dorner, “is the endeavour to point out
the essential unity of the divine and human.”355355Dorner, div. II. vol. iii. p. 101.
The heading of the section in which this admission occurs, is, “The Foundations
of the New Christology laid by Schelling, Hegel, Schleiermacher.” This is equivalent
to saying that the New Christology is founded on the principles of the pantheistic
philosophy. Baur356356Die christliche Lehre von der Dreieingkeit und Menschwerdung
Gottes in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung. Von Dr. Ferdinand Christian Baur,
Tübingen, 1843, vol. iii. p. 751.
says the same thing. He entitles the last division of his work on the Trinity, “Die
gegenseitige Durchdringung der Philosophie und der Theologie,” i.e., The mutual
interpenetration of Philosophy and Theology. The latter is merged into the former.
Dr. Ullmann says, the doctrine of the oneness of God and man, which he represents
as the fundamental idea of Schleiermacher’s 429theology and of Christianity itself,
is not entirely new. It was inculcated by the German Mystics of the Middle Ages.357357Dr. Ullman, Essay in the Studien und Kritiken for 1846.
Hegel says that what the Bible teaches of Christ is not true of an individual, but
only of mankind as a whole; and Hegel’s Christological ideas, Dr. John Nevin of
Mercersburg, says, “are very significant and full of instruction.”358358Mercersburg Review, January, 1851, pp. 58, 61, 73. Review
of Liebner’s Christology, by Rev. John W. Nevin, D. D., Professor of Theology in
the Seminary of the German Reformed Church.
The objection that these principles are pantheistical, he pronounces “a mere sound
without any force whatever,” and adds that we need a Christian pantheism to oppose
the antichristian pantheism of the day. Schleiermacher says that a pantheism which
holds to the formula “One and All” (“the all-one-doctrine”) is perfectly consistent
with religion, and differs little in its effects from Monotheism! Similar avowals
might be adduced without number. Theologians of this class deny that God and man
are essentially different. They repeat, almost with every breath, that God and man
are one, and they make this the fundamental idea of Christianity, and especially
of Christology

Pantheistical Christology.

As Christian theology purports to be an exhibition of the
theology of the Bible, every theory which involves the denial of a personal God,
properly lies beyond its sphere. In modern systems, however, there is such a blending
of pantheistic principles with theistic doctrines, that the two cannot be kept entirely
separate. Pantheistical and theistical theologians, of the modern school, unite
in asserting “the oneness of God and man.” They understand that doctrine, however,
in different senses. With the former it is understood to mean identity, so that
man is only the highest existence-form of God; with the others, it often means nothing
more than that “natura humana capax est naturæ divinæ.” The human is capable
of receiving the attributes of the divine. Man may become God.

It follows, in the first place, from the doctrine, that God
is the only real Being of which the world is the ever changing phenomenon, that
“die Menschwerdung Gottes ist eine Menschwerdung von Ewigkeit.” The incarnation
of God is from eternity. And, in the second place, that this process is continuous,
complete in no one instance, but only in the whole. Every man is a form of the life
of God, but the infinite is never fully realized or revealed in any one manifestation.
Some of these philosophers were willing to 430say that God was more fully manifested
in Christ than in any other individual of our race, but the difference between Him
and other men is only one of degree. Others say that the peculiar distinction of
Christ was that He had a clearer view and a deeper conviction of the identity of
God and man than any other man. It all amounts to the summation of the doctrine
as given by Strauss.359359Das Leben Jesu, § 149, 3d edit. Tübingen, 1839, vol.
ii. pp. 766, 767; and Dogmatik, vol. ii. p. 214.
“If,” says he, “the idea of the oneness of the divine and human natures, of God
and man, be a reality, does it follow that this reality is effected or manifested
once for all in a single individual, as never before and never after him? . . . .
An idea is never exhibited in all its fulness in a single exemplar; and in all
others only imperfectly. An idea is always realized in a variety and multiplicity
of exemplars, which complement each other; its richness being diffused by the constant
change of individuals, one succeeding or supplanting another. . . . . Mankind, the
human race, is the God-man. The key to a true Christology is that the predicates
which the Church applies to Christ, as an individual, belong to an idea, or to a
generic whole.” So Blasche360360Quoted by Strauss, Dogmatik, edit. Tübingen, 1841, vol. ii. p. 214.
says, “We understand by God’s becoming man, not the revelation of Himself in one
or more of the most perfect of men, but the manifestation of Himself in the race
of men (in der ganzen Menschheit).”

Theistical Christology.

We have the authority of Dorner for saying that the modern
speculations on Christology are founded on the two principles that there is but
one nature in Christ, and that human nature is capax naturæ divinæ, is
capable of being made divine. To this must be added a third, although Dorner himself
does not hold it, that the divine is capable of becoming human.

The advocates of these principles agree, First, in admitting
that there was a true growth of the man Christ Jesus. When an infant He was as feeble,
as ignorant, and as unconscious of moral character as other infants. When a child
He had no more intellectual or physical strength than other children. There is,
however, a difference in their mode of statement as to what Christ was during the
maturity of his earthly life. According to some, He had no superhuman knowledge
or power. All He knew was communicated to Him, some say by the Father, others say
by the Logos. The miracles which He wrought were not by his own power, but 431by the
power of God. At the grave of Lazarus He prayed for power to restore his friend
to life, or rather that God would raise him from the dead; and He gave thanks that
his prayer was heard.

Secondly, they agree that the development of the humanity
of our Lord was without sin. He was from the beginning holy, harmless, undefiled,
and separate from sinners. Nevertheless He had to contend with all the infirmities
of our nature, and to resist all the temptations arising from the flesh, the world,
and the devil, with which his people have to contend. He was liable to sin. As He
was subject to hunger, thirst, weariness, and pain, as He had feelings capable of
being wounded by ingratitude and insult, He was liable to the impatience and resentment
which suffering or injury is adapted to produce. As He was susceptible of pleasure
from the love and admiration of others, He was exposed to the temptation of seeking
the honour which comes from men. In all things, however, He was without sin.

Thirdly, they agree that it was only gradually that Christ
came to the knowledge that He was a divine person, and into the possession and use
of divine attributes. Communications of knowledge and power were made to Him from
time to time from on high, so that both the knowledge of what He was and the consciousness
of the possession of divine perfections came to Him by degrees. Christ’s exaltation,
therefore, began and was carried on while He was here on earth, but it was not until
his resurrection and ascension that He became truly and forever divine.

Fourthly, since his ascension and session at the right hand
of God, He is still a man, and only a man. Nevertheless He is an infinite man. A
man with all the characteristics of a human soul possessed of all the perfections
of the Godhead. Since his ascension, as Gess expresses it, a man has been taken
into the adorable Trinity. “As the glorified Son remains man, a man is thus received
into the trinitarian life of the Deity from and by the glorification of the Son.”361361The Scripture Doctrine of the Person of Christ. Freely
translated from the German of W. F. Gess, with many additions, by J. A. Reubelt,
D. D., Professor in Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind. Andover: Warren F. Draper,
1870, p. 414. This work is admirably translated, and presents the clearest outline
of the modern doctrine of Kenosis which has yet appeared. The author expresses his
satisfaction that he is sustained in his views arrived at by the study of the Scriptures,
by the authority of Liebner and Thomasius, who reached substantially the same conclusions
by the way of speculation. There is ground for this self-congratulation of the author,
for his book is far more Scriptural in its treatment of the subject than any other
book of the same class with which we are acquainted. It calls for a thorough review and candid criticism.
Thomasius says the same thing. “Die immanente 432Lebensbewegung der drei Personen ist
nunmehr gewissermassen eine göttlich-menschhiche geworden; . . . . So tief ist in
der Person Christi die Menschheit in den Kreis der Trinität hereingenommen — und
zwar nicht auf vorübergehende Weise, sondern für immer. Denn der Sohn bleibt ewig
Mensch.”362362Christi Person und Werk. Darstellung der evangelisch-lutherischen
Dogmatik vom Mittelpunkte der Christologie aus. Von G. Thomasius, Dr. u. ord.
Professor der Theologie an der Universität Erlangen. Zweite erweiterte Auflage,
Erlangen, 1857, vol. ii. p. 295.
That is: The immanent life movement of the three persons has now become in a measure
divine-human; . . . . so deep has humanity in the person of Christ been taken into
the sphere of the Trinity, — and that not in a temporary manner, but forever. For
the Son remains man eternally. On the following page he says that humanity, or manhood
(Menschsein), has become the permanent existence-form of God the Son. And again363363Ibid. p. 299.
he says that humanity (das menschliche Geschlecht) is “exalted to full equality
with God” (schlecht Gott selbst gleichgesetzt). This would be absolutely impossible
were not human nature in its original constitution capable of receiving all divine
perfections and of becoming absolutely divine. Accordingly, in this connection,
Thomasius says that man is of all creatures the nearest to God.364364Ibid. p. 296.
“He must from his nature be capable of full participation in the divine glory; he
must be the organ into which the entire fulness of the divine love can be poured,
and through which it can adequately act, otherwise we cannot understand how God
could appropriate human nature as his own permanent form of existence.”

The result of the incarnation, therefore, is that God becomes
man in such a sense that the Son of God has no life or activity, no knowledge, presence,
or power outside of or apart from his humanity. In Christ there is but one life,
one activity, one consciousness. Every act of the incarnate Logos is a human act,
and every experience of the humanity of Christ, all his sorrows, infirmities, and
pains, were the experience of the Logos. “The absolute life, which is the being
of God, exists in the narrow limits of an earthly-human life; absolute holiness
and truth, the essential attributes of God, develop themselves in the form of human
thinking and willing; absolute love has assumed a human form, it lives as human
feeling, as human sensibility in the heart of this man; absolute freedom has the
form of human self-determination. The Son of God has not reserved for Himself a
special existence form (ein besonderes Fürsichseyn), a special consciousness, a
special sphere or power of action; He does not exist anywhere outside of the flesh
(nec Verbum 433extra carnem nec caro extra Verbum). He has in the totality of his
being become man, his existence-and-life-form is that of a corporeal-spiritual man
subject to the limitations of time and space. The other side of this relation is
that the human nature is taken up entirely into the divine, and is pervaded by it.
It has neither a special human consciousness nor a special human activity of the
will for itself in distinction from that of the Logos, just as the latter has nothing
which does not belong to the former; in the human thinking, willing, and acting,
the Logos thinks, wills, and acts. All dualism of a divine and human existence-form,
of a divine and human consciousness, of a concomitancy of divine and human action,
is of necessity excluded; as is also any successive communication (Hineinbildung)
of one to the other; it is an identical living, activity, sensibility, and development,
because it is one Ego, one divine human personality (unio, communio, communicatio,
naturarum).”365365Thomasius, ut supra, pp. 201, 202.

The other view of the subject is, that the Eternal Logos,
by a process of self-limitation, divested Himself of all his divine attributes.
He ceased to be omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. He 434reduced Himself, so
to speak, to the dimensions of a man. While an infant, as before said, He had no
knowledge or power which does not belong to any other human infant. He went through
the regular process of growth and development, and had all the experiences of ordinary
men, yet without sin. But as the substance of the Logos was the substance of the
infant born of the Virgin, it continued to develop not only until it reached a height
of excellence and glory to which no other man ever attained, but until it ultimately
culminated in full equality with God.

On this point Thomasius says, First, that if the Eternal Son,
after the assumption of humanity, retained his divine perfections and prerogatives,
He did not become man, nor did He unite Himself with humanity. He hovered over it;
and included it as a larger circle does a smaller. But there was no real contact
or communication. Secondly, if at the moment of the incarnation the divine nature
in the fulness of its being and perfection was communicated to the humanity, then
Christ could not have had a human existence. The historical life is gone; and all
bond of relationship and sympathy with us is destroyed. Thirdly, the only way in
which the great end in view could be answered was that God Himself by a process
of depotentiation, or self-limitation, should become man; that He should take upon
Himself a form of existence subject to the limitations of time and space, and pass
through the ordinary and regular process of human development, and take part in
all the sinless experiences of a human life and death.367367Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, vol. ii. pp. 141-143.

Ebrard.

Ebrard puts the doctrine in a somewhat different form. He
molds that the Logos reduced Himself to the dimensions of a man; but at the same
time retained and exercised his divine perfections as the second person of the Trinity.
In answer to the question, How human and divine attributes can be united in the
same person, he says the solution of the difficulty is to be found in the original
constitution and destiny of humanity. Man was designed for this supreme dominion,
perfect holiness, and boundless knowledge. “The glorification of God as Son in time
is identical with the acme of the normal development of man.” It is held by many,
not by all of the advocates of this theory, that the incarnation would have taken
place had men never sinned. It entered into the divine purpose in reference to man
that he should thus attain oneness with Himself.

As to the still more difficult question, How can the Son as
the second person of the Trinity retain his divine perfections (as Ebrard holds
that He does), and yet, as revealed on earth, lay them aside? “The one is world-ruling
and omniscient, and the other is not,” he says we must understand the problem. It
is not that two natures become one nature. “Two natures as two things (Stücken)
are out of the question.” The Logos is not one nature, and the incarnate Son of
God, Jesus, another; but the incarnate Son possesses the properties of both natures.
The question only is, How can the incarnate Logos, since He has not the one nature,
the divine, in the form of God (in der Ewigkeitsform), be one with the world-governing
Logos who is in the form of God? This question, which is equivalent to asking, How
the same individual mind can be finite and infinite at the same time, he answers
by saying, first, that the continuity of existence does not depend upon continuity
of consciousness. A man in a swoon or in a state of magnetic sleep, is the same
person, although his consciousness be suspended or abnormal. That is true, but the
question is, How the same mind can be conscious and unconscious at the same time,
How th same individual Logos can be a feeble infant and at the same time the intelligently
active world-governing God. Secondly, he admits that the above answer does not fully
meet the case, and therefore adds that the whole difficulty disappears when we remember
(dass die Ewigkeit nicht eine der Zeit parallellaufende Linie ist), that Eternity
and Time are not parallel lines. But, thirdly, seeing that this is not enough,
he says that the Eternal Logos overlooks his human form of existence with one glance
(mit einem Schlage), whereas the incarnate Logos does not, but with true human consciousness,
looks forward and backward. All this avails nothing. The contradiction remains.
The theory assumes that the same individual mind can be conscious and unconscious,
finite and infinite, ignorant and omniscient, at the same time.368368Christliche Dogmatik. Von Johannes Heinrich August Ebrard,
Doctor und ord. Professor der ref. Theologie zu Erlangen. Königsberg, 1852, vol. ii. §§ 391-394, pp. 142-149.

Gess.

Gess admits the contradiction involved in the doctrine as
presented by Ebrard, and therefore adopts the common form of the theory. He holds
that the Eternal Son at the incarnation laid aside the Godhead and became a man.
The substance of the Logos remained; but that substance was in the form of an infant,
and had nothing beyond an infant’s knowledge or power. In the 436Trinity, the Father
is God of Himself; the Son is God by the communication of the divine life from the
Father. During the earthly career of the Logos the communication of the divine life
was suspended. The Logos reduced to the limitations of manhood, received from the
Father such communications of supernatural power as He needed. When He ascended
and sat down at the right hand of God, He received the divine life in all its fulness
as He had possessed it before He came into the world. “The same substance,” he says,
“slumbered in the womb of the Virgin, without self-consciousness, which thirty-four
years after yielded itself a sacrifice, without blemish and spot, to the Father,
having previously revealed to mankind the truth, which it had perfectly comprehended.
At the time of this slumber there already existed in this substance that indestructible
life by virtue of which it had a accomplished our redemption (Heb. vii. 16), as
well as the power to know the Father as no other knows Him (Matt. xi. 27), but it
was unconscious life. Moreover, the same substance which now slumbered in unconsciousness,
had before existed with the Father as the Logos, by whom the Father had created,
governed, and preserved the world, but it was no longer aware of this.”369369The Scripture Doctrine of the Person of Christ. Translated
from the German by J. A. Reubelt, D. D., p. 342.
On the opposite page, it is said, that it is the self-conscious will of a man that
calls all his powers into action. “When this sinks into slumber, all the
powers of the soul fall asleep. It was the substance of the Logos which in itself
had the power to call the world into existence, to uphold and enlighten it; but
when the Logos sank into the slumber of unconsciousness, his eternal holiness, his
omniscience, his omnipresence, and all his really divine attributes were gone; it
being the self-conscious will of the Logos through which all the divine powers abiding
in Him had been called into action. They were gone, i.e., suspended, — existing
still, but only potentially. Further, a man when he awakes from sleep is at once
in full possession of all his powers and faculties; but when consciousness burst
upon Jesus it was not that of the eternal Logos, but a really human self-consciousness,
which develops by degrees and preserves its identity only through constant changes. . . . .
It was this human form of self-conscious existence which the Logos chose in
his act of self-divestiture. Hence it plainly appears that omniscience, which sees
and knows all things at once, and from one central point, and the unchangeable merging
of the will into the Father’s, or divine holiness, are not to be attributed to Jesus
437while on earth; and the same with the unchangeable bliss of the divine life. Nor
was it only eternal self-consciousness which the Son laid aside, but He also ‘went
out from the Father.’ We are not to understand that the indwelling of the Father,
Son, and Spirit in each other had been dissolved, but that the Father’s giving the
Son to have life in Himself, as the Father has, was suspended. Having laid aside
his self-consciousness and activity, He lost with this the capacity of receiving
into Himself the stream of life from the Father, and sending it forth again; in
other words, He was no longer omnipotent. Equally lost, or laid aside, was his omnipresence,
which must not, at all events, be considered as universally diffused, but as dependent
on the self-conscious will.”370370The Scripture Doctrine of the Person of Christ, pp. 343, 344.

Remarks.

1. The first remark to be made on this theory in all its forms
is that it is a departure from the faith of the Church. This objection turns up
first on every occasion, because that is its proper place. If the Bible be the only
infallible rule of faith and practice; and if the Bible be a plain book, and if
the Spirit guides the people of God (not the external church, or body of mere professing
Christians) into the knowledge of the truth, then the presumption is invincible
that what all true Christians believe to be the sense of Scripture is its sense.
The whole Christian world has believed, and still does believe, that Christ was
a true man; that He had a real body and a human soul. The Council of Chalcedon in
formulating this article of the common faith, declared that Christ was, and is,
God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever; that according to the
one nature He is consubstantial (ὁμοούσιος) within
us, and according to the other He is consubstantial with the Father. There is no
dispute as to the sense in which the Council used the word nature, because
it has an established meaning in theology, and because it is explained by the use
of the Latin word consubstantial, and the Greek word ὁμοούσιος.
Nor is it questioned that the decisions of that Council have been accepted by the
whole Church. This doctrine of two natures in Christ the new theory rejects. This,
as we have seen, Dorner expressly asserts. We have seen, also, that Ebrard says,
that the idea of two natures in the sense of two substances (Stücke, concrete existences)
is out of the question. The Logos did not assume human nature, but human attributes;
He appeared in the fashion of a man. Gess, in his luminous book, teaches over and
over, that it was the substance 438of the Logos that was the human soul of Christ.
He speaks of his “Logos-nature;” of the “Logos being the life, or life-principle”
of his humanity. He says, in so many words,371371The Scripture Doctrine of the Person of Christ, p. 378.
that the soul of Jesus was “not like that of other men, a soul created by God and
for God, but the Logos in the form of human existence.” It is consonant, he says,
“to the nature of Christ’s soul, as being the Logos existing in human form, that
God should take possession of it in a peculiar manner.” This idea is the very essence
of the doctrine. For if the Logos “emptied” Himself, if He laid aside his omnipresence
and omnipotence, and became a human soul, what need or what possibility remains
of another newly created soul?

This is not Apollinarianism; for Apollinaris taught that the
Logos supplied the place of a rational soul in the person of Christ. He did not
become such a soul, but, retaining in actu as well as in potentia,
the fulness of the divine perfections, took its place. Nor is it exactly Eutychianism.
For Eutyches said that there were two natures before the union, and only one after
it. The two were so united as to become one. This the theory before us denies, and
affirms that from the beginning the Logos was the sole rational element in the constitution
of the person of our Lord. It agrees, however, with both these ancient and Church-rejected
errors in their essential principles. It agrees with the Apollinarians in saying
that the Logos was the rational element in Christ; and it agrees with the Eutychians
in saying that Christ had but one nature.

The doctrine is in still more obvious contradiction to the
decisions of the Council of Constantinople on the Monothelite controversy. That
Council decided that as there were two natures in Christ, there were of necessity
two wills. The new theory in asserting the oneness of Christ’s nature, denies that
He had two wills. The acts, emotions, and sufferings of his earthly life, were the
acts, emotions, and sufferings of the Logos. So far as Christian interest in the
doctrine is concerned, it was to get at this conclusion the theory was adopted if
not devised. It was to explain how that more than human value belongs to the sufferings
of Christ, and more than human efficacy to his life, that so many Christian men
were led to embrace the new doctrine. The Church doctrine. however, does not consider
either the sufferings or the life of Christ as those of a mere man. He was a divine
person, God manifest in the flesh; and his sufferings and life were those of that
person. 439Christians can say, and always have said, with an intelligent and cordial
faith, that God purchased the Church with his blood. It was because the person who
died was possessed of an Eternal Spirit that his blood cleanses from all sin.

2. The arguments from Scripture in support of the theory are
for the most part founded on the neglect of the principle so often referred to,
that anything can be predicated of the person of Christ that can be predicated either
of his human or of his divine nature. That the one person is said to be born and
to suffer and die, no more proves that the Logos as such was born and suffered and
died, than saying of a man that he is sick or wounded proves that his soul is diseased
or injured. The same remark, of course, applies to the exaltation and dominion of
the risen Redeemer. It is the one person who is the object of the worship of all
created intelligences, and to whom their obedience is due; but this does not prove
that Christ’s human nature is possessed of divine attributes. Indeed, according
to the modern doctrine of Kenosis, He has no human nature, as already proved.

3. The theory in question is inconsistent with the clear doctrine
both of revealed and natural religion concerning the nature of God. He is a Spirit
infinite, eternal, and immutable. Any theory, therefore, which assumes that God
lays aside his omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence, and becomes as feeble,
ignorant, and circumscribed as an infant, contradicts the first principle of all
religion, and, if it be pardonable to say so, shocks the common sense of men.

4. Instead of removing any difficulties attending the doctrine
of the incarnation, it greatly increases them. According to Dorner’s view we are
called upon to believe that a human soul receives gradually increasing measures
of the divine fulness, until at last it becomes infinite. This is equivalent to
saying that it ceases to exist. It is only on the assumption that Dorner, when he
says that the essential nature of God is love, and that the communication of the
Godhead is the communication of the fulness of the divine love, means that God is
purely ethical, an attribute, but not a substance, that we can attach any definite
meaning to his doctrine. According to Ebrard we are required to believe that the
one divine and infinite substance of the Logos was finite and infinite; conscious
and unconscious; omnipresent, and confined within narrow limits in space; and that
it was active in the exercise of omnipotence, and as feeble as an infant at one
and the same time. According to the more common view of the subject, we are called
upon to believe 440that the infinite God, in the person of his Son, can become ignorant
and feeble, and then omniscient and almighty; that He can cease to be God, and then
again become God. Gess says that God is not omnipotent unless He has power over
Himself, power, that is, to cease to be God. If this be true of the Son it must
be true of the Father and of the Spirit; that is, it must be true that the Triune
Jehovah can annihilate Himself. And, then, what follows?

5. This doctrine destroys the humanity of Christ. He is not
and never was a man. He never had a human soul or a human heart. It was the substance
of the Logos invested with a human body that was born of the Virgin, and not a human
soul. A being without a human soul is not a man. The Saviour which this theory offers
us is the Infinite God with a spiritual body. In thus exalting the humanity of Christ
to infinitude it is dissipated and lost.

Schleiermacher.

The prevalent Christology among a numerous and distinguished
class of modern theologians, though not professedly pantheistic, is nevertheless
founded on the assumption of the essential oneness of God and man. This class includes
the school of Schleiermacher in all its modifications not only in Germany, but also
in England and America. Schleiermacher is regarded as the most interesting as well
as the most influential theologian of modern times. He was not and could not be
self-consistent, as he attempted the reconciliation of contradictory doctrines.
There are three things in his antecedents and circumstances necessary to be considered,
in order to any just appreciation of the man or of his system. First, he passed
the early part of his life among the Moravians, and imbibed something of their spirit,
and especially of their reverence for Christ, who to the Moravians is almost the
exclusive object of worship. This reverence for Christ, Schleiermacher retained
all his life. In one of the discourses pronounced on the occasion of his death,
it was said, “He gave up everything that he might save Christ.” His philosophy,
his historical criticism, everything, he was willing to make bend to the great aim
of preserving to himself that cherished object of reverence and love.372372When in Berlin the writer often attended Schleiermacher’s church.
The hymns to be sung were printed on slips of paper and distributed at the doors.
They were always evangelical and spiritual in an eminent degree, filled with praise
and gratitude to our Redeemer. Tholuck said that Schleiermacher, when sitting in
the evening with his family, would often say, “Hush, children: let us sing a hymn
of praise to Christ.” Can we doubt that he is singing those praises now? To whomsoever
Christ is God, St. John assures us Christ is a Savior.
Secondly, his academic culture led 441him to adopt a philosophical system whose principles
and tendencies were decidedly pantheistic. And, thirdly, he succumbed to the attacks
which rationalistic criticism had made against faith in the Bible. He could not
receive it as a supernatural revelation from God. He did not regard it as containing
doctrines which we are bound to believe on the authority of the sacred writers.
Deprived, therefore, of the historical Christ, or at least deprived of the ordinary
historical basis for faith in Christ, he determined to construct a Christology and
a whole system of Christian theology from within; to weave it out of the materials
furnished by his own religious consciousness. He said to the Rationalists that they
might expunge what they pleased from the evangelical records; they might demolish
the whole edifice of Church theology, he had a Christ and a Christianity in his
own bosom. In the prosecution of the novel and difficult task of constructing a
system of Christian theology out of the facts of Christian experience, he designed
to secure for it a position unassailable by philosophy. Philosophy being a matter
of knowledge, and religion a matter of feeling, the two belonged to distinct spheres,
and therefore there need be no collision between them.

Schleiermacher’s Christology.

He assumed, (1.) That religion in general, and Christianity
in particular, was not a doctrine or system of doctrine; not a cultus, or
a discipline; but a life, an inward spiritual power or force. (2.) That the true
Christian is conscious of being the recipient of this new life. (3.) That he knows
that it did not originate in himself, nor in the Church to which he belongs, because
humanity neither in the individual nor in any of its organizations is capable of
producing what is specifically new and higher and better than itself. (4.) This
necessitates the assumption of a source, or author of this life, outside of the
race of ordinary men or of humanity in its regular development. (5.) Hence he assumed
the actual historical existence of a new, sinless, and absolutely perfect man by
a new creative act. (6.) That man was Christ, from whom every Christian is conscious
that he derives the new life of which he is the subject. (7.) Christ is the Urbild,
or Ideal Man, in whom the idea of humanity is fully realized. (8.) He is nevertheless
divine, or God in fashion as a man, because man is the modus existendi of
God on the earth. In ordinary men, even in Adam, God, so to speak, was and is imperfectly
developed. The God-consciousness, or God within, is overborne by our world-consciousness,
or our consciousness as determined by things seen and 442temporal. (9.) In Christ this
was not the case. In Him, without struggle or opposition, the God-consciousness,
or God within, controlled his whole inward and outward life. (10.) Christ’s preëminence
over other men consisted in his absolute sinlessness and freedom from error. Of
Him it is to be said, not simply potest non peccare, but non potest peccare.
He could not be tempted for temptation supposes the possibility of sin, and the
possibility of sin supposes less than perfection. (11.) The redeeming work and worth
of Christ consists not in what He taught or in what He did, but in what He was.
What He taught and what He did may be explained in different ways, or even explained
away, but what He was, remains, and is the one all important fact. (12.) As He was
thus perfect, thus the ideal and miraculously produced man, He is the source of
life to others. He awakens the dormant God-consciousness in men, and gives it ascendency
over the sensibility, or sensuous element of our nature, so that believers come
to be, in the same sense, although ever in a less degree, what Christ was, God manifest
in the flesh. This being the work of Christ, and this redeeming process being due
to what He was, his resurrection, ascension, session at the right hand of God, etc.,
etc., may all be dispensed with. They may be admitted on historical grounds, good
men having testified to them as facts, but they have no religious import or power.
(13.) The new life of which Christ is the author, which in this country is commonly
denominated “his human divine life,” is the animating and constituting principle
of the Church, and it is by union with the Church that this life passes over to
individual believers.

Objections to this Theory.

This is a meagre outline of Schleiermacher’s Christology.
His doctrine concerning Christ is so implicated with his peculiar views on anthropology,
on theology, and on the relation of God to the world, that it can neither be fully
presented nor properly appreciated except as an integral part of his whole system.

Gladly as Schleiermacher’s theory was embraced as a refuge
by those who had been constrained to give up Christianity as a doctrine, and great
as have been its popularity and influence, it was assailed from very different quarters
and judged from many different standpoints. Here it can only be viewed from the
position of Christian theology. It should be remembered that as the idealist does
not feel and act according to his theory, so the inward life of a theologian may
not be determined by his speculative doctrines. This does not render error less
objectionable or less dangerous. It 443is nevertheless a fact, and enables us to condemn
a system without wounding our charity for its author. Schleiermacher, however, was
an exceptional case. As a general rule, a man’s faith is the expression of his inward
life.

1. The first objection to Schleiermacher’s theory is that
it is not and does not pretend to be Biblical. It is not founded upon the objective
teachings of the Word of God. It assumes, indeed, that the religious experience
of the Apostles and early Christians was substantially the same, and therefore involved
the same truths, as the experience of Christians of the present day. Schleiermacher
even admits that their experience was so pure and distinctly marked as to have the
authority of a standard by which other believers are to judge of their own. But
he denies that the interpretation which they gave of their experience has normal
authority for us, that is, he says that we are not bound to believe what the Apostles
believed. His appeals to the Scriptures in support of his peculiar doctrines are
extremely rare, and merely incidental. He professes to build up a system independent
of the Bible, founded on what Christians now find in the contents of their own consciousness.

2. The system is not what it purports to be. Schleiermacher
professed to discard speculation from the province of religion. He undertook to
construct a theory of Christianity with which philosophy should have nothing to
do, and therefore one against which it could have no right to object. In point of
fact his system is a matter of speculation from beginning to end. It could never
have existed except as the product of a mind imbued with the principles of German
philosophy. It has no coherence, no force, and indeed no meaning, unless you take
for granted the correctness of his views of the nature of God, of the nature of
man, and of the relation of God to the world. This objection was urged against his
system by all parties in Germany. The supernaturalists, who believed in the Bible,
charged him with substituting the conclusions of his own philosophy for the dictates
of Christian consciousness. And the philosophers said he was true neither to his
philosophy nor to his religion. He changed from one ground to the other just as
it suited his purpose. On this subject Strauss373373Dogmatik, Tübingen, 1841, vol. ii. p. 176.
says that Schleiermacher first betrayed philosophy to theology, and then theology
to philosophy; and that this half-and-halfness is characteristic of his whole position.
Although this was said in a spirit of unkindness, it is nevertheless true. His speculative
opinions, i.e., the conclusions at which he arrives by the way of speculation,
are the basis of his 444whole system; and therefore those who adopt it receive it on
this authority of reason, and not on that of revelation. It is a philosophical theory
and nothing more. This will become apparent as we proceed.

Founded on Pantheistic Principles.

3. A third objection is that the system is essentially pantheistic.
This is, indeed, an ambiguous term. It is here used, however, in its ordinary and
proper sense. It is not meant that Schleiermacher held that the universe is God,
or God the universe, but that he denied any proper dualism between God and the world,
and between God and man. He held such views of God as were inconsistent with Theism
in the true and accepted meaning of the word. That is, he did not admit the existence
of a personal, extramundane God. This is a charge brought against his system from
the beginning, even by avowed pantheists themselves. They say that while denying
the existence of a personal God he nevertheless teaches doctrines inconsistent with
that denial, i.e., with what they regard as the true view of the relation of the
infinite to the finite. Theists brought the same objection. Dr. Braniss374374Ueber Schleiermacher’s Glaubenlehre, ein kritischer Versuch, p. 182.
says, “Die Annahme eines persönlichen Gottes ist in diesem System unmöglich,” i.e.,
“The admission of a personal God is, in this system, impossible.”375375See Gess, Uebersicht über Schleiermacher’s System, p. 185.
This he proves, among other ways, by a reference to what Schleiermacher teaches
of the attributes of God, which with him are not predicates of a subject; they tell
us nothing as to what God is, they are only forms or states of our own consciousness,
as determined by our relation to the system of things in their causal relation.
Strauss, from another standpoint, says that Schleiermacher could never reconcile
himself to the acknowledgment of a personal, extra-mundane God. Christ was the only
God he had; and this, alas! was little more than an ideal God; one who had been;
but whether He still is, he leaves undetermined, at least theoretically. Baur presents
the inconsistency of Schleiermacher in different points of view. In one place he
says that he swung to and fro between the idealism of Kant and Fichte, and the pantheism
of Spinoza and Schelling, which he regarded only as the different poles of the same
system (derselben Weltanschauung).376376Baur’s Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit, vol. iii. p. 842.
Again he says that the essential element of Schleiermacher’s doctrine of God is
the same immanence of God in the world that Spinoza taught.377377Ibid. p. 850.
He endorses the criticism of Strauss, that all the main positions of the 445first part
of Schleiermacher’s Glaubenslehre are intelligible only when translated into the
formulas of Spinoza, whence they were derived; and adds that he made no greater
difference between God and the world than Spinoza made between the natura naturans
and the natura naturata.378378Baur’s Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit, vol. ii. p. 851.
A Schleiermacher wrote at the time when the dispute between the Rationalists and
Supernaturalists was at its height. The one referred all events to natural causes;
the other contended for the possibility of miracles and of a supernatural revelation.
Both parties being Theists, the Rationalists had no ground to stand on. For if the
existence of an extramundane, personal God, the creator of the world, be admitted,
it is utterly unreasonable to deny that He may intervene with his immediate agency
in the sequence of events. Schleiermacher cut the knot by denying the difference
between the natural and supernatural. There is really no extramundane God, no other
sphere of divine activity than the world, and no other law of his action than necessity.379379See Baur, p. 858, who quotes Zeller (Theol. Jahrb. Bd.
1, H. 2, S. 285) as saying that these principles, which appear everywhere in Schleiermacher’s
Dogmatik, contain the whole secret of Spinozism.

Involves the Rejection of the Doctrine of the Trinity.

4. Schleiermacher’s system ignores the doctrine of the Trinity.
With him God in the world, is the Father; God in Christ, the Son; God in the Church,
the Spirit. All personal preëxistence of Christ is thus necessarily excluded. The
Scriptures and the Church teach that the eternal Son of God, who was with the Father
from eternity; who made the worlds; who could say, “Before Abraham was I am,” became
man, being born of a woman, yet without sin. This Schleiermacher denies. There was
no Son of God, before the birth of Christ in Bethlehem. Then only, Christ began
to be as a distinct person; He had no preëxistence beyond that which is common to
all men.

5. This system makes Christ a mere man. He is constantly
represented as the Ideal man, Urbild, a perfect man. In Him the idea of humanity
is said to be fully realized. His life is said to be one; and that one a true human
life. There was in Him but one nature, and that nature human. Now it matters little
that with these representations Christ is said to be divine, and his life a divine
life; for this is said on the ground that the divine is human, and the human divine.
God and man are one. The difference between 446Christ and other men is simply one of
degree. He is perfect, we are imperfect. He is, as Baur said, simply primus inter pares.
Christ is the Urbild or archetypal man. But “the actuality of the archetypal does
not go beyond our nature.”380380Dorner’s Person of Christ, div. II. vol. iii. p. 301.
Even in the modified form in which his doctrine has been adopted in this country,
this feature of the system has been retained. Dr. Nevin in his “Mystical Presence”
is abundant in his assertion of the simple humanity of Christ. He says He had not
one life of the body and another of the soul; nor one life of his humanity and another
of his divinity. It is one life throughout, and it “is in all respects a true human
life.”381381The Mystical Presence, Philadelphia, 1846, p. 167.
“Christ is the archetypal man in whom the true idea of humanity is brought to view.”
He “is the ideal man.” Our nature is said to be complete only in Him. This also
is the staple of the “Mercersburg Review” in all its articles relating either to
Anthropology or Soteriology. It is everywhere assumed that God and man are one;
that divinity is the completed development of humanity. “The glorification of Christ
was the full advancement of our human nature itself to the power of a divine life.”
There is nothing in Christ which does not belong to humanity. Steudel therefore
says of the Christology of Schleiermacher that it makes Christ only “a finished
man.” Knapp says, that he deifies the human and renders human the divine.382382Gess’s Uebersicht über Schleiermachers System, p. 225.
Dorner says, “He believed the perfect being of God to be in Christ; and for this
reason regarded Him as the complete man. And so, vice versa, because He is the complete
man, the consciousness of God has become a being of God in Him.”383383Dorner, ut supra, II. vol. iii. p. 194.
That is, because He is a perfect man, He is God. And Strauss says, that according
to Schleiermacher the creation of man imperfect in Adam was completed in Christ;
and as Christ did not assume a true body and a reasonable soul, but
generic humanity, human nature as a generic life is raised to the power of divinity,
not in Him only but also in the Church. The incarnation of God is not a unique manifestation
in the flesh, in the person of Christ, appearing on earth for thirty-three years
and then transferred to heaven. This, it is said, would have been only “a sublime
avatar, fantastically paraded thus long before men,” without any further effect.
On the contrary, it is the introduction of the life of God into humanity rendering
it divine. It is natural that those who thus deify themselves, should look upon
those who regard themselves as “worms of the dust,” as 447very poor creatures.384384At a session of the Academic Senate of the University of Berlin, Marheinecke called Neander a blockhead, and asked him, What
right had he to an opinion
on any philosophical question? Neander, on the other hand, said that Marheinecke’s
doctrine, Hegelianism, was to him ein Greuel, a disgusting horror. And no wonder,
for a doctrine which makes men the highest existence form of God, is enough to shock even Satan.
The objection, however, to this system now in hand is not so much that it deifies
man, as that it makes Christ nothing more than an ideal man. It is therefore utterly
at variance with the teachings of Scripture, the faith of the Church, and the intimate
convictions of the people of God.

Schleiermacher’s Anthropology.

6. As the system under consideration is unscriptural in what
it teaches concerning the nature of God, and the person of Christ, it is no less
contrary to the Scriptures in what it teaches concerning man. Indeed, the theology
and anthropology of the system are so related that they cannot be separately held.
According to the Bible and the common faith both of the Church and of the world,
man is a being created by the word of God’s power, consisting of a material body
and an immaterial soul. There are, therefore, in the constitution of his person,
two distinct subjects or substances, each with its own properties; so that although
intimately united in the present state of being, the soul is capable of conscious
existence and activity, out of the body, or separated from it. The soul of man is
therefore a distinct individual subsistence, and not the form, or modus existendi
of a general life. According to Schleiermacher, “Man as such, or in himself, is
the knowing (das Erkennen) of the earth in its eternal substance (Seyn) and in its
ever changing development. Or the Spirit (der Geist, God) in the way or form in
which it comes to self-consciousness in our earth.” Der Mensch an sich ist das Erkennen der Erde in Seinem ewigen Seyn und in seinem immer wechselnden Werden: oder der
Geist, der nach Art und Weise unserer Erde zum Selbstbewusstseyn sich gestaltet.385385Dorner, first edition, p. 488.
By the Mercersburg writers the idea is set forth in rather different terms but substantially
to the same effect.386386In the Mercersburg Review, 1850, p. 550.
Thus it is said, “The world in its lower view is not simply the outward theatre
or stage on which man is set to act his part as a candidate for heaven. In the widest
of its different forms of existence, it is pervaded throughout with the power of
a single life, which comes ultimately to its full sense and force only in the human
person.” And387387Page 7 of the same volume.
“The world is an organic whole which completes itself in 448man; and humanity is regarded
throughout as a single grand fact which is brought to pass, not at once, but in
the way of history, unfolding always more its true interior sense, and reaching
on to its final consummation.” Again, “It is a universal property of life to unfold
itself from within, by a self-organizing power, towards a certain end, which end
is its own realization, or in other words, the actual exhibition and actualization
in outward form of all the elements, functions, powers, and capacities which potentially
it includes. Thus life may be said to be all at its commencement which it can become
in the end.”

The theory is that there is an infinite, absolute, and universal
something, spirit, life, life-power, substance, God, Urwesen, or whatever it may
be called, which develops itself by an inward force, in all the forms of actual
existence. Of these forms man is the highest. This development is by a necessary
process, as much so as the growth of a plant or of an animal. The stem of the tree,
its branches, foliage, and fruit, are not formed by sudden, creative acts, accomplishing
the effect, by way of miracle. All is regular, a law-work, an uninterrupted force
acting according to its internal nature. So in the self-evolution of the spirit,
or principle of life, there is no room for special intervention, or creative acts.
All goes on in the way of history, and by regular organic development. Here there
is a fault in Schleiermacher’s doctrine. He admitted a creative, supernatural act
at the creation. And as the quantum of life, or spirit, communicated to man at first
was insufficient to carry on his development to perfection, i.e., until it realized,
or actualized all that is in that life of which he is the manifestation (i.e.,
in God), there was a necessity for a new creative act, by which in the person of
Christ, a perfect man was produced. From Him, and after Him, the process goes on
naturally, by regular development.388388Schleiermacher (Zweites Sendschreiben zu Lücke; Works,
edit. Berlin, 1836, first part, vol. ii. p. 653), says: “Where the supernatural
occurs with me, it is always a first; it becomes natural as a second. Thus the creation
is supernatural, but afterwards it is a natural process (Naturzusammenhang). So
Christ is supernatural as to his beginning, but He becomes natural as a simple or
pure human person. The same is true of the Holy Spirit and of the Christian Church.”
In like manner Dr. Nevin repeatedly says, “The supernatural has become natural.”
This inconsistency in Schleiermacher’s system, this collision between his philosophy
and his theology is dwelt upon by all his German critics. Thus Schwarz (Geschichte
des neuesten Theologie, p. 254), says, “Schleiermacher steht in seiner Ontologie
und Kosmologie, in Dem, was er über das Verhältniss Gottes zur Welt in seiner Dialektik
feststellt, ganz und gar auf dem Boden einer einheitlichen und zusammenhängenden
Weltanschauung. Ebenso in der Lehre von der Schöpfung und Erhaltung der Welt, wie
sie die Dogmatik ausführt. Gott und die Welt sind untrennbare Correlata; das Verhältniss
Gottes zur Welt ist ein nothwendiges, stetiges, zusammenhängendes. Für ausserordentliche
Actionen, für ein vereinzeltes Handeln Gottes auf die Welt ausserhalb des Naturgesetzes
oder gegen dasselbe ist nirgends ein Ort. . . . . Aber — es ist zuzugeben, — diese
die philosophische Grundanschauung bildende Immanenz wird von dem Theologen Schleiermacher
nicht streng innegehalten, das aus der Ontologie und Kosmologie verbannte Wunder
dringt durch die Christologie wieder ein. Die Person Christi in ihrer religiössittlichen
Absolutheit ist ein Wunder, eine Ausnahme vom Naturgesetz, sie stehet einzig da.
Ihr Eintreten in die Menschheit erfodert trotz aller Anschliessungen nach rückwärtz
wie nach vorwärtz einen besondern göttlichen Anstoss, sie ist aus der geschichtlichen
Entwickelung nicht hervorgegangen und nicht zu begreifen. Und dieser übernaturliche
Anstoss ist es, welcher, so sehr er auch wieder in die Natürlichkeit einlenkt, doch
mit dem religiös-moralischen Wunder auch die Möglichkeit der damit zusammenhängenden
physischen Wunder offen lässt und so den ganzen Weltzusammenhang durchbricht.”
The life-power, the spirit, is quantitively increased 449and henceforth develops itself
historically in the form of the Church. The Church, therefore, consists of those
to whom this elevated principle of life has been communicated, and in whom it develops
itself until it realizes all it includes. That is, until the essential oneness of
God and man is in the Church fully realized.

There is another mode of representation current with the disciples
of Schleiermacher, especially in this country. its advocates speak of humanity as
a generic life. They define man to be the manifestation of this generic life in
connection with a special corporeal organization, by which it is individualized
and becomes personal. It was this generic humanity which sinned in Adam, and thenceforth
was corrupt in all the individual men in whom it was manifested. It was this generic
humanity that Christ assumed into personal union with his divinity, not as two distinct
substances, but so united as to become one generic human life. This purified humanity
now develops itself, by an inward force in the Church, just as from Adam generic
humanity was developed in his posterity. All this, however, differs only in words
from Schleiermacher’s simpler and more philosophic statement. For it is still assumed
as the fundamental idea of the gospel, that God and man are one. This generic humanity
is only a form of the life of God. And as to its sinning in Adam, and being thenceforth
corrupt, sin and corruption are only imperfect development. God, the universal life
principle, as Dr. Nevin calls it, so variously manifested in the different existences
in this world, is imperfectly or insufficiently manifested in man generally, but
perfectly in Christ, and through Hun ultimately in like perfection in his people.
Christ, therefore, according to Dorner, is a universal person. He comprises in Himself
the whole of humanity. All that is separately revealed in others is summed up in
Him. In this system “Der Mittelpunkt,” says Schwarz, “christlicher Wahrheit, der
christologische Kern der ganzen Dogmatik ist die Göschel-Dorner’sche monströse Vorstellung
von der Allpersönlichkeit Christi, die ihm als dem Urmenschen zukommt. Es
ist ‘die Zusammenfassung des ganzen gegliederten 450Systems der natürlichen Gaben
der Menschheit.”389389Schwarz, Geschichte der neuesten Theologie, p. 260.
“The middle point of Christian truth, the kernel of dogmatic theology is Goschel’s
and Dorner’s monstrous idea of the All-personality of Christ which belongs to Him
as the Urmensch or archetypal man. He comprehends within Himself all the diversified
forms or systems of the natural gifts of mankind.” Göschel and Dorner, adds Schwarz,
were driven to this view because they conceded to their opponent Strauss, that the
Absolute could only reveal itself in the totality of individuals; and therefore
as the Absolute was in Christ, he must embrace all individuals, because (the Gattungsbegriff)
the true and total idea of humanity, the ideal man, or Urmensch, was revealed in
Christ. The objection is constantly urged by his German critics, as Baur, Strauss,
and Schwarz, that Schleiermacher admits that the Absolute is revealed in perfection
in the totality of individuals, and yet is revealed perfectly in Christ, which according
to Schleiermacher’s own philosophy they pronounce to be a contradiction or impossibility.390390Baur’s Christliche Lehre von der Versöhnung, p. 621-624.

The design of the preceding paragraphs is simply to show the
unscriptural character of Schleiermacher’s Christology in all its modifications,
because it is founded on a view of the nature of man entirely at variance with the
Word of God. It assumes the oneness of God and man. It takes for granted that fully
developed humanity is divine; that Christ in being the ideal, or perfect man, is
God.

Schleiermacher’s Theory perverts the Plan of Salvation.

7. It need hardly be remarked that the plan of salvation according
to Schleiermacher’s doctrine is entirely different from that revealed in the Bible
and cherished by the Church in all ages. It is, in Germany at least, regarded as
a rejection of the Church system, and as a substitute for it, and only in some of
its forms as a reconciliation of the two, as to what is deemed absolutely essential.
The system in all its forms rejects the doctrines of atonement or satisfaction to
the justice of God; of regeneration and sanctification by the Holy Spirit; of justification
as a judicial or forensic act; of faith in Christ, as a trusting to what He has
done for us, as distinguished from what He does in us; in short, of all the great
distinctive doctrines not merely of the Reformation but of the Catholic faith. By
many of the followers of Schleiermacher these doctrines are rejected in so many
words; by others the terms are more or 451less retained, but not in their received
and established meaning. For the Scriptural system of salvation, another is substituted.
Christ saves us not by what He teaches, or by what He does, but by what He is. He
infuses a new principle of life into the Church and into the world. The universal
life as communicated to, or revealed in Adam, has been struggling on, imperfectly
developed in all his descendants. In Christ a new influx of this life is communicated
to, or infused into the veins of humanity. From this as a new starting point, humanity
enters on another stage of development, which is to issue in the full actualization
of the divine life in the form of humanity. As from Adam human nature was developed
from within by an inward force in a regular historical process; so from Christ,
there is the same historical development from within. All is natural. There is nothing
supernatural but the initial point; the first impulse, or the first infusion of
the divine life. There is no place in the system for the work of the Holy Spirit.
Indeed, the very existence of the Holy Spirit as a personal being is by Schleiermacher
expressly denied. By the Spirit he means the common life of the Church, that is,
the divine life, or God as revealed in the Church. As we derive from Adam a quantitively
deficient, and in that sense corrupt, nature, and have nothing more to do with him;
so from Christ we receive a larger measure of life, spirit, or divine nature, and
have nothing more to do with Him. His whole redeeming work is in the new leaven
he has introduced into humanity, which diffuses itself in the way of natural development.
This, as Baur says, comes after all to little more than the impression which his
character has made on the world. He draws a parallel between Schleiermacher and
Kant, between the “Glaubenslehre” of the former, and “Die Religion innerhalb der
Grenzen der blossen Vernunft” of the latter; the clear rationalism of the one and
the mystical obscurity of the other. Both admit that there is a good and a bad principle.
Both say that man’s redemption consists in the triumph of the good principle. Both
say that the deliverance from evil or the work of redemption, is a purely natural
process. Both refer the success of the struggle to the influence of Christ. The
one says that He imparts to men a new life, the other says that He awakens the dormant
good that is already in man’s nature. Everything admits of a simple and of a mystical
explanation.391391The writer was once sitting with Tholuck in a public garden,
when the latter said, “I turn my eyes in the opposite direction, and still I am
conscious of your presence. How is that?” The reply was, “You know the fact that
I am here; and that knowledge produces the state of mind, you call a consciousness
of my presence.” Tholuck good naturedly rejoined, “O how stupid that is. Don’t you
believe that there is an influence which streams forth from me to you and from you
to me?” The only answer was, “Perhaps so.” Of all the genial, lovely, and loving
men whom the writer in the course of a long life has met, Tholuck stands among the
very first. The writer derived more good from him than from all other sources combined
during his two years sojourn in Europe.
In every great epoch some one 452man not only impresses his character and infuses his
spirit into the men of his generation, but also transmits his influence from age
to age. The whole body of Lutherans are what they are because Luther was what he
was. The spirit of Ignatius Loyola is just as active in the Jesuits of our day as
it was in his own person. The Scotch are what they are because of John Knox; and
the Wesleyans owe not only their doctrines and discipline but their whole animus
and character to John Wesley. To this category do the merciless German critics of
Schleiermacher reduce his theory of the redemption of man by Jesus Christ. It is
a matter of personal influence like that of other great men. This will be regarded
by his disciples as a most degrading and unjust view of his doctrine. And it doubtless
is unjust. For whatever may be true of his mere speculative system, he unquestionably
in his heart regarded Christ as infinitely exalted above other men, and as the proper
object of adoration and trust.

This Vermittelungstheologie (the mediating-theology),
as it is called in Germany, is confessedly an attempt to combine the conclusions
of modern speculation with Christian doctrine, or rather with Christianity. It is
an attempt to mix incongruous elements which refuse to enter into combination. The
modern speculative philosophy in all its forms insists on the denial of all real
dualism; God and the world are correlata, the one supposes the other; without
the world there is no God; creation is the self-evolution or self-manifestation
of God: and is therefore necessary and eternal. God can no more be without the world,
than mind without thought. The preservation, progress, and consummation of the world
is by a necessary process of development, as in all the forms of life. There is
no possibility of special intervention, on the part of God. Miracles whether spiritual
or physical are an absurdity and an impossibility.392392“Eigentliche Mirakel anzunehmen, d. h. Unterbrechungen oder
Aufhebungen der Naturordnung, dazu wird kein philosophischer Denker sich herablassen.”
J. H. Fichte, by Schwarz, p. 319.
So is any agency of God in time, or otherwise than as a general life-power. This
precludes the efficacy of prayer except as to its subjective influence. Schleiermacher
shared in this horror of the supernatural, and this rejection of all miracles. In
the case of Christ, he was forced to admit “a new creative act.” But he apologized
for this admission by representing it as only the completion 453of the original act
of creation, and by saying that it was only for a moment, and that all thenceforth
was natural.

Schwarz, himself a great admirer, although not a disciple of
Schleiermacher, characterizes this “mediating theology” as an utter failure. It
is neither one thing nor the other. It is neither true to its speculative principles,
nor true to Christianity. It virtually rejects the Church system, yet endeavours
to save Christianity by adopting at least its phraseology. Schwarz says it is a
system of “phrases;” which endeavours to heal the wounds of orthodoxy by words which
seem to mean much, but which may be made to mean much or little as the reader pleases.
It speaks constantly of Christianity as a life, as the life of God, as developing
itself organically and naturally, not by supernatural assistance, but by an inward
life-power, as in other cases of organic development. It assumes to rise to the
conception of the whole world as an organism, in which God is one of the factors;
the world and God differing not in substance or life, but simply in functions. It
concedes to “speculation” that the fundamental truth of philosophy and of Christianity
is the oneness of God and man. Man is God living in a certain form, or state of
development. While “the mediating theology” concedes all this, it nevertheless admits
of a miraculous or supernatural beginning of the world and of the person of Christ,
and thus gives up its whole philosophical system. At least the members of one wing
of Schleiermacher’s school are thus inconsistent; those of the other are more true
to their principles.

As Christian theology is simply the exhibition and illustration
of the facts and truths of the Bible in their due relations and proportions, it
has nothing to do with these speculations. The “mediating theology” does not pretend
to be founded on the Bible. It does not, at least in Germany, profess allegiance
to the Church doctrine. It avowedly gives up Christianity as a doctrine to save
it as a life. It is founded on “speculation” and not upon authority, whether of
the Scriptures or of the Church. It affords therefore no other and no firmer foundation
for our faith and hope, than any other philosophical system; and that, as all history
proves, is a foundation of quick-sand, shifting and sinking from month to month
and even from day to day. Schleiermacher has been dead little more than thirty years,
and already there are eight or ten different classes of his general disciples who
differ from each other almost as much as from the doctrines of the Reformation.
Twesten and Ullmann, Liebner and Thomasius, Lange and Alexander, 454Schweizer, are
wide apart, each having his own philosophical solvent of the doctrines of the Bible,
and each producing a different residuum.

The simple, sublime, and saving Christology of the Bible and
of the Church universal is: “That the eternal Son of God became man by taking to
Himself a true body and a reasonable soul and so was and continues to be God and
man in two distinct natures and one person forever.”

361The Scripture Doctrine of the Person of Christ. Freely
translated from the German of W. F. Gess, with many additions, by J. A. Reubelt,
D. D., Professor in Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind. Andover: Warren F. Draper,
1870, p. 414. This work is admirably translated, and presents the clearest outline
of the modern doctrine of Kenosis which has yet appeared. The author expresses his
satisfaction that he is sustained in his views arrived at by the study of the Scriptures,
by the authority of Liebner and Thomasius, who reached substantially the same conclusions
by the way of speculation. There is ground for this self-congratulation of the author,
for his book is far more Scriptural in its treatment of the subject than any other
book of the same class with which we are acquainted. It calls for a thorough review and candid criticism.

372When in Berlin the writer often attended Schleiermacher’s church.
The hymns to be sung were printed on slips of paper and distributed at the doors.
They were always evangelical and spiritual in an eminent degree, filled with praise
and gratitude to our Redeemer. Tholuck said that Schleiermacher, when sitting in
the evening with his family, would often say, “Hush, children: let us sing a hymn
of praise to Christ.” Can we doubt that he is singing those praises now? To whomsoever
Christ is God, St. John assures us Christ is a Savior.

384At a session of the Academic Senate of the University of Berlin, Marheinecke called Neander a blockhead, and asked him, What
right had he to an opinion
on any philosophical question? Neander, on the other hand, said that Marheinecke’s
doctrine, Hegelianism, was to him ein Greuel, a disgusting horror. And no wonder,
for a doctrine which makes men the highest existence form of God, is enough to shock even Satan.

391The writer was once sitting with Tholuck in a public garden,
when the latter said, “I turn my eyes in the opposite direction, and still I am
conscious of your presence. How is that?” The reply was, “You know the fact that
I am here; and that knowledge produces the state of mind, you call a consciousness
of my presence.” Tholuck good naturedly rejoined, “O how stupid that is. Don’t you
believe that there is an influence which streams forth from me to you and from you
to me?” The only answer was, “Perhaps so.” Of all the genial, lovely, and loving
men whom the writer in the course of a long life has met, Tholuck stands among the
very first. The writer derived more good from him than from all other sources combined
during his two years sojourn in Europe.